Europe Nationalism in Music and the United States

The early stages of a specifically musical engagement with nationalism may be found in the late-eighteenth-century fascination with folk song, which fed the development of early nineteenth-century German lieder, folk-based chamber songs expressive of a yearning subjectivity. In his lieder, Franz Schubert (1797–1828) placed that subjectivity, often alienated, within a specific landscape, frequently carried within the piano's figuration. Such placement of people within a landscape became a core strategy of nationalist art, and was more elaborately accomplished in German Romantic Opera, beginning with Der Freischütz (1821) by Carl Maria von Weber (1786–1826) and continuing in the next generation with the operas and music dramas of Richard Wagner (1813–1883); particularly effective were Weber's evocations of the German woods, through horn choirs, and his (and Wagner's) frequent recourse to mythology. Beethoven's Ninth Symphony (1824) is implicitly nationalist, but in a forward-looking way, projecting a temporal and geographic fusion of classical Greek ideals (Elysium), "oriental" ("Turkish") tropes, and modern German Christianity. In the generation following his death, Beethoven became the cornerstone of Germany's nationalist claims to preeminence in music. By the middle of the nineteenth century, older German musical treasures from the past (especially those by J. S. Bach) were being systematically collected, establishing a milestone in the nascent field of musicology. After the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871) and the unification of Germany that resulted from it, the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth—the opera house designed and built by Wagner—became an enduring monument to "Holy German Art."

During the same general period, Italy also became unified, led by a movement—the Risorgimento—whose slogan ("Vittorio Emanuele Re D'Italia," championing a leader of the movement) was based on the letters spelling the name of the foremost Italian composer, Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901). After the Franco-Prussian war, French composers, who until then competed primarily with Italy, and mainly in the domain of opera, began to engage deliberately with Germany's proclaimed mastery of instrumental music, at which point various musical nationalisms began to proliferate according to the familiar narrative outlined above.